D.C. statehood could cost more than $1 billion. City officials aren’t fazed. | Washington Post

Some analysts said statehood could bring other financial opportunities as well. If the District had voting representation in Congress, lawmakers could lobby more effectively for federal grant funding available to all states, said Yesim Sayin Taylor, executive director of the D.C. Policy Center.

As for the pensions, Sayin Taylor said she considers it unlikely that D.C. would have to assume the remaining unfunded pension liabilities the federal government took over in 1997 — because the pension system was created by the federal government for District employees, and the U.S. government acknowledged the liabilities were not the city’s fault.

Without statehood, the District has always had to adapt to restrictions imposed on it by the federal government, ranging from the prohibition on regulating the sale of recreational marijuana to the law restricting the height of buildings, Sayin Taylor said.